GENTLE GIANT Re-Visited
Derek Shulman Interview 11.11.09
The Gentle Giant catalog has just been reissued digitally this week on iTunes and other digital outlets. It will become available for the first time on re-mastered CD, along with a DVD of previously unreleased live footage in early 2009. The following interview with Derek Shulman offers up his recollections and reflections on the bands music and his career.
Gentle Giant was never one of the archetypal Anglo prog groups who traded in pomp and circumstance. They were an eclectic band, made up of mates with different musical tendencies who came together to make music that explored their own collective ideas in search of a group style and sound.
As chance would have it this happened in a time when the world seemed freer, a more open and magical place and the music being made served as a special soundtrack to so many peoples lives. Derek’s insightful answers clearly illustrate just why the band and its music were special, as well as the truism that while it’s great to look back and appreciate all you have done, the trick is to never forget that you should live in the here now and make the best of what you’ve got today.
Q) When reflecting back on the days of Gentle Giant how do you feel about what the band accomplished musically?
D) I have to say I’m quite happy and quite proud I think of the legacy we left, though at the time we didn’t know what that was, or what we were doing. At that time we simply put the band together, made albums and went out on the road. We tried to push ourselves musically, and as well push each other to do better. We were also simply trying to earn a living, and keep the band together. The fact that the interest has lasted all this time is very gratifying to all of us. I’m actually quite pleased about it as I didn’t expect that the interest in our music was going to continue when we disbanded. It has and it’s expanded into different generations which as I’m obviously very happy about as well.
Q) Was there any one thing that led the band to call it a day back then?
D) Oh yeah, there’s many, many reasons, but ultimately the reason was that we lasted the course and it was time to move on. My brother and I had started out in the remains of a group called Simon Dupree & the Big Sound who were quite popular and had toured around Europe as well as had a couple of very big hit records in England and Europe while we were both in high school. We worked in the same studio as the Beatles, this was crazy for kids who were in their teens. So we’d actually been touring for 15 years when Gentle Giant finally decided to disband.
To be honest our changing musical tastes and changes in our personal lives played a big part in that as well. I was married with a child and so was Kerry so to go out and tour for 3-4 months at a time was more difficult. Also I think the creative juices were beginning to wane a bit and there were elements of not disenchantment, but disappointment that we hadn’t reached some of the audiences that some of our contemporaries had reached. So we all just said let’s move on, and we did. The band finally called it a day by the middle of the 1980’s.
Q) An economics question here, was it lucrative, did you guys make money during Gentle Giant?
D) Making records was really kind of a means to an end as far as we were concerned. It was necessary for the group to make a living and that came from playing live. We toured and toured a lot and our audiences grew through or live appearances. Making records was only grist for our live appearances so we would have new music to play. We did have some sort of advance from the record company to do an album, and if there was anything left over it would go into our pockets, it was certainly not enough to pay for Ferrari’s or estates in the country however. We simply kept touring so our audiences grew and we made the records to facilitate that.
Q) What have you and the other various members been doing musically, if anything since then?
D) I think I know for the most part what the various members have done. Myself, I was going to produce a couple albums as there were a few bands who wanted me to get involved with producing them in the studio, though I didn’t particularly see myself sitting in the studio 12 hours a day and not seeing the sunlight. Around then I got a call from a couple friends who had worked with the group in England that were then in New York at Polygram Records. They asked if I’d like to come to work in the US with them. I had no idea at that time of working for a record company and my initial thought was that’s kinda like going to work for the enemy. However, I needed to pay the rent so I went to New York and met the people there. My first reaction was that it wasn’t as bad as I thought as far as the people were concerned and then I came to think that as a former musician maybe I could make a difference in terms of the perception about what a record company is to the artists. So I joined Polygram in 1982 and since then I’ve worked at 3 or 4 other companies.
Over time I signed some relatively popular artists, some of which may be pooh poohed by people who prefer Gentle Giant over more popular music. My first signing was Bon Jovi, then Cinderella, Tear for Fears, Men Without Hats and Kingdom Come. Then I went on to run a company at Time Warner called ATCO where I signed Pantera, AC/DC, Bad Company, lots of pop things too. After that I went on to run a company called Roadrunner where I signed Slipknot, Nickelback, etc. Now I have my own company and have signed a really good artist from Portland, OR, Dan Reed. That’s my career since the Gentle Giant days.
My brother Ray initially started doing music for TV, but then got into production and has found and produced bands like the Sugarcubes, Bjork, and the Sunday’s. However he got disenchanted being in the studio himself and is now working with the management company of Genesis and Queen to author DVDs.
Kerry the keyboard player went on to teach music and keyboards. John the drummer continued on being a drummer until he was no longer able to, as now he’s physically not well. And Gary was an itinerant guitarist.
Q) There have been some partial get togethers in the past, both live and in the studio such as “3 Friends”. Will there be a reunion of Gentle Giant for perhaps some select live performances?
D) No. I think that the history has been written. And I think that when we decided to disband that was the end of the chapter, and that chapter is closed now. It’s great to look back and re-read it, but you can’t re-write it. I think there could be a demand for it and we could well do it, but we’d be doing it for the money. And to tell you the truth I don’t want to do that, neither does Ray and I think the rest of the band would agree. I think the one thing we had as far as music was concerned and even our own personal lifestyles in putting Gentle Giant together was integrity. And I don’t want to lose that. There are other avenues to explore and personal growth to be undertaken. I personally wouldn’t want Gentle Giant to become a parody of what they once were as some bands that are still playing today may have become.
Q) Various parties have owned the rights to GG albums in the past and in 2005 the “35th Anniversary Editions” were reissued. Have the rights now fully reverted to the band so we will at last get upgraded re-mastered editions of them all?
D) The 35th Anniversary editions were the bands, but we didn’t have access to the quarter inch masters. Now we do. The group has signed to EMI and we were able to finagle and strong arm (laugh) EMI. They were our original label as well, so we got to look into the vaults and found the quarter inch tapes. Now we’ve re-mastered all the albums including some music that was never released before that Ray and Kerry have assembled. In addition we found some video footage as well.
Early next year it will all be released on CD and DVD. This week for the first time the Gentle Giant music was released digitally on iTunes, Rhapsody and other digital outlets. Hopefully kids, who never knew Gentle Giant existed when they go online and look under misc. G for example, for instance Lady Gaga, they’ll see Gentle Giant and check it out (laugh).
Q) Will there be unreleased material from the albums original sessions included?
D) Oh yeah, we’ve given the digital outlets some live tracks that have never been heard before. Next year we’ll also have some music we recorded that has never been released before on album come out on CD. We’ll also have a couple of box sets, and some concert appearances we were able to get hold of from the BBC, and a German film company, put out on DVD as well. Additionally a couple albums on vinyl, why not…
Q) Do you or the band in general have an album they consider a favorite?
D) I can’t speak for the others, but I hear some good things, and also some lousy things (laugh) in all the albums. Probably my personal favorite album is “Free Hand”. I think it was the final gelling of the various members of the band from their personal musical backgrounds into the jigsaw puzzle which became the full picture. I think things came together really well during that period of “Free Hand” and “Power& The Glory”. That became the point where the divergent pieces became part of a great musical whole that was Gentle Giant.
Q) “In A Glass House” was considered one of the best GG albums by many American fans. Why wasn’t it ever issued in the USA?
D) Columbia Records who we were signed to at the time thought it was incredibly uncommercial and no one would buy it. So they shelved it and it never came out. We toured the USA constantly during those days and that became our biggest selling import album. I’ve been told by people who worked in that field it ended up selling somewhere in the region of almost a half a million copies in the US on import. So maybe Columbia actually did us a favor as it did become a sort of collector’s item. That was a fairly good album as well, but very tough to make.
Q) The music seemed more progressive in the beginning and tended to go more in a commercial direction as subsequent releases came out. Was that intentional by the band, was that a result of a push from the label, or perhaps it was simply changing with the times?
D) It was a combination of all things surely, but there was never any push from the label. We were a very insular kind of entity. We were never A&R’d or pushed by anyone at the label. We did what we did and handed it in, that was it.
Progressive, I’m not exactly sure what that means when we’re tagged as part of the progressive rock world because the individual members had all come from different areas of music. What we didn’t do was set out to sound like King Crimson, Genesis or whoever was popular at that period of time. Especially towards the later part of the 70’s, the songs became shorter and there were elements of commerciality to it as opposed to being just pieces of music.
In reality, Gentle Giant was always about simply trying to combine our various talents and interests into some sort of music that we all felt good about. We did work to make our music and ourselves better. We never took ourselves seriously. We were also lousy at trying to make hit singles and think about radio. We also really didn’t want to be pompous as well. In retrospect, we were what we were. All the albums stand up as entities of their time in their own right. So I think maybe that’s what the fans are talking about.
Q) In another direction, is there any particular artist or music that you enjoy listening to today?
D) My problem is that I am in the music business, or the business of music which is what I found out it really is. So when I listen I find myself tending to critique it and think what it would be like if we could do this or that to it…
Q) Maybe there’s a guilty pleasure musically you might have then?
D) I always like R’n’B music, so I love AC/DC. They were quintessentially a punk band based in the blues area. What they do is so simple yet effective. Their music has stood up for this long as they did certain things, made music for themselves, very much as we did in Gentle Giant. Re-mastering our albums now I see that there’s a certain element of timelessness to it. They have the same quality about them. I’ve been in the studio with them. They use guitar as the rhythm, not a hi-hat or kick drum. They use Malcolm Young’s guitar as the rhythm, with the kick drum on the downbeat and they don’t have fills on the drums, it’s very interesting. It’s a fascinating way of playing blues based on hard rock music. So there you go, (laugh) that’s my guilty pleasure – AC/DC…
Q) With the digital release of all 7 Gentle Giant albums on iTunes and the other digital channels and EMI reissues on CD in early 2009, I’m obliged to ask if there’s any chance the group might get together if not for touring the perhaps to have a go at a full fledged new studio album in the future?
D) Not as the group Gentle Giant. We’ve moved on to different things, become different people and leading different lives. So it couldn’t be Gentle Giant now. It would only be a time capsule of us after the fact.
However, you can never say never about some of us getting together and saying, let’s try something. That said if it did happen, that doesn’t mean anyone outside our families would ever hear it. I think Ray and Kerry are actually talking about getting together and seeing if they can produce some magic, I may be part of that if I have the time and energy. Who knows? But there won’t be any attempt to cash in on any current interest the reissues might bring about. Reforming Gentle Giant again just to make some money and put a few bucks away in the bank, I wouldn’t do that. I’ve always said, “If it feels like a job, don’t do it.”
